Chapter 18
“I know I should, Virgil, but I just can’t,” says a voice I don’t recognize. The whisper is low and edged with regret. “I know you think it’s awful of me, but you just don’t know.”
“Andy Ray, I’m not here to judge you.”
“Well, if you’re not, you’re the only one. Everybody else is sure as hell judging me. My son’s always judging me. My siblings. Relatives I barely know. The people I work with. I even had to stop going to church because of all the people coming up telling me what I should be doing, and every time I say it wasn’t really good growing up, all they have to say is, ‘But that’s your daaaaaaddyyyyyyyy.’ I just can’t take it anymore. He did what he did, and even if I thought he’d changed in the last sixty years, I’m not sure I’d want to see him then either.”
I don’t know who Andy Ray is, but I have my suspicions that he’s one of the local boys who left home at first chance but came back later in life to his hometown, or at least nearby.
“Andy Ray,” Virgil says from inside his office, “I told you, I’m not judging you. I didn’t invite you here today for me to tell you that you should or should not see your father, regardless of his demands.”
“But the people in church!” The other voice cracks. “They come here to visit him, and he tells them what an awful son I am. How he’s worried that I’m gonna go to hell if I don’t come sit by his bedside and hold his hand and read the Bible to him. But I’ve already been to hell. Those people don’t know that my whole childhood was hell.” Then, through sobs, he adds, “The truth is, they do know, but they never did anything about it.”
My breath catches in my own throat, and I try not to make a noise. How many people in my own family and community knew about Uncle Bobby but did nothing to protect me? I understand Andy Ray’s dilemma perfectly. My mom had a very different personality than this man’s father, but I still need her to make amends for how she failed me as a child. No matter how much she failed herself as well.
“And my son—oh, Virgil! Little Ray’s enough like Daddy to have been a clone of him. Little Ray thinks his granddaddy walks on water because he’s known only one side of the man. The two of them are so alike, and my son’s always taking up for his Pops, and I get the brunt from both of them. So I just can’t do this anymore. After today? This can’t happen again.”
“That’s exactly why I invited you here, Andy Ray. To apologize. I had no idea that your dad and Little Ray were cooking up a scheme to get you here. Your father might be in his last months, maybe weeks, of his life, but he’s not what we call actively dying. And he certainly wasn’t about to cross the veil today. I’ve offered to help him when that time comes, but he adamantly refuses any help. Despite what Little Ray might’ve told you, I just want to assure you that if you ever get a call supposedly from this institution that you need to rush to your father’s bedside, contact me first. I’ll be able to tell you, and you’ll be able to decide based on truthful information, not manipulation. If you change your mind about seeing your father again, that’s fine, but if you choose not to, that’s fine, too. It is not for me or anyone else to get into your personal relationship with him just because he’s a resident here. Oh, and for the record, I’ve found that abusers rarely see themselves as abusers. They always have some way to rationalize it away. What I’m telling you, Andy Ray, is that I will never judge you, and I will never call you and tell you what you should or should not do. If you don’t hear from anyone before he passes, then I will be the one to notify you. Do you understand?”
From where I stand, holding my breath, I hear nothing, yet I’m certain that Andy Ray is nodding. This is Virgil at his best: compassionate, non-judgmental, kind, honoring other people’s boundaries.
I retrace my steps into the main corridor and pretend to be playing with my phone when a man who looks vaguely familiar sidesteps me as he backhands the tears from his face. It’s not Andy Ray that I recognize, but there’s a similarity in his aging face that reminds me of a middle-aged man I knew in town when I was a teenager. Andrew Raymond Something. He’d been a highly respected merchant among his own generation, but all the kids hated him for the way he smiled sweetly at everyone he valued while threatening those he didn’t. I imagine that the worst of it now for Andy Ray is looking in the mirror every day and seeing his father’s face staring back at him. I can only hope that his son isn’t as much of a clone of his father physically.
I turn the corner without looking and bump hard into Virgil. He almost knocks me down. Before I crash into the wall, he grabs my upper arm and rights me.
“You okay, Laurie? I-I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Oh. You said to drop by whenever I wanted.” He said that a month ago, and I’m only now taking him up on his offer.
He smiles. “Of course. But you should probably call first. For your own convenience. I may not be available. Sometimes I’m walking a resident home.”
“Walking…?”
I follow him as he beckons me into his office. His workspace does have a door, but someone has stacked heavy boxes in front of it, so he can’t close it. He pulls up one of the upholstered walnut straight chairs in front of his desk and pats the cushion for me before he returns to his own chair.
“Yes, walking them home. That’s how I like to think of it, anyway. When that time comes, I’d like to give them as much of my time as I can. They’re usually either frightened or too tired to be frightened, so I sit with them, talk to them, sing to them, read to them. Whatever I need to do to walk them peacefully home.”
I stare across his walnut desk at him. Of course, I sense death all around him! I was right: he’s a death-walker. And I’m positive he knows he is. I doubt anyone else in this town realizes that, though. They simply think of him as Virgil, the good son, who made his mother’s last months easier than they otherwise would have been. The widower who’d lost his wife while he’d been serving his country. A kind soul, and everyone’s friend. They probably even think that that lightning-shaped tattoo on his right wrist is something from his military days and have no idea that it’s related to magick wielders.
“You’re… you’re a psychopomp. A death doula.”
His eyebrows knit to the point of touching. Then he nods and drops his voice. “I had a feeling I could admit that to you. I’ve dropped enough hints, hoping you’d catch on. But again, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t advertise it. I’m only here as long as I have an impact, and a lot of people here wouldn’t understand.”
“Yeah, that I certainly understand. How long have you…?
“Mmmm. Twenty years or so.”
“So, before your mom—”
“Way before my mom’s sickness. Before my wife’s passing. I became non-denominational clergy in my twenties.” He holds up his right wrist and taps the sigil. “Walking Lightning. Symbol of my priesthood.”
“You’re all death doulas?”
He laughs but keeps his voice low. “I’m actually the only one of us who does this kind of work. I seem to have a talent for it. But in a real sense, my entire priesthood’s mission is to death walk our planet in its last days, though I admit, we’ve been at our mission for a few millennia now. Eventually, we’ll be right.”
Another witch in town. Someone I might partner with to manifest everything I need while I’m here to help my mom. Not just an ally but a friend. A hint of euphoria at finding my own tribe lifts my heart.
I lower my voice as well. “Are there other, um, of you in town?”
“Not a one. There aren’t even other of you in town.”
We stare at one another. In slight nods of mutual understanding, we don’t have to break the silence. We both know exactly what we are.
“No,” he says finally, stroking his silver beard, “I’m alone here. One of our extensive coven suggested I come back here where I grew up, after my mom passed, and to take good care of my neighbors. Part of my destiny. I still have important work to do later in my life, and doing this work now will teach me what I need to know. I may be in my forties, but I still have a lot to learn. Our culture doesn’t teach us much about how to be elders or how to die, just how to prolong what it does value—our youth.”
I don’t look at him. I’m afraid what I might see between us. Instead, I focus on his desk, on the spiral-bound notebook that’s open, with his own scribblings on the open pages. Names, dates, notes. Then words in quotation marks at the end of each entry.
“Angels. Angels.”
“Mum?”
“Music.”
“Mama’s here.”
Private words. Not meant for me. But I have to set my gaze somewhere.
He catches me studying a tall glass bottle, corked at the top, on the other side of the room. The liquid inside is clear, with brown sediment at the bottom. Not drinking water. The waves of energy feel familiar. A soft cloth that resembles a multi-tufted diaper topples out of its folds next to the bottle.
“You don’t recognize the stump-water from your farm?”
“Necromancy?”
Wheezing with laughter, he clutches his belly and doubles over. “Is that what you think of me?” He reins in his belly laugh so no one in the corridor will suspect us of being inappropriate.
Instantly, I feel guilty, but he’s made me forget my mom’s condition and my own troubles for a few seconds, and I’m as grateful as I am guilty.
“If you’re worried about what potions I make, Laurie, the holy water is in the cabinet behind you. No, I’m not kidding.”
Over my shoulder, a tall painted cabinet with bottles and books invites me closer with a haze of increasingly blue energy at its edges. Books line the top shelves, accessible through sliding glass windows. Some look rare but not the kind of rare that anyone in my hometown would recognize as being about witchcraft. These are over a century old with titles on the spines that include words like Nature, Plants, Cures, and Tinctures. All hiding in plain sight, disguised as homemade medicine.
The bottom shelf displays cobalt-blue glass jars but a few are clear. One catches my eye. Specks of green float in it.
“Vervain in your holy water?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Rainwater or natural spring?”
“Rainwater.”
“Salt?”
He nods. “Consecrated.”
“Astrological correspondences?”
“Made and blessed only during lunar eclipses.”
“And you keep it here at work in case of vampires?”
Virgil chuckles. “Holy water is good for just about anything. As I’m sure you know.”
“And the stump-water?”
His shoulders rise as he pushes back from his desk. Looking down, he sucks air through his teeth. “Okay, but you cannot tell on me. Okay?”
“Who would I tell?”
He leans forward to whisper conspiratorially. “We have a resident—several, in fact—who sometimes get skin rashes. Stump-water has medicinal properties. A little on a cloth, and the rash clears right up. No prescription creams or ointments have ever been able to get rid of it, but the way I bless the stump-water and infuse it with my life force, the rash is just… gone.”
I’m not surprised. Unorthodox now, but our ancestors here practiced home remedies the same way, with or without an infusion of life force. “Hey, maybe you can give me something for my allergies. Dix brought me flowers, but they make my eyes water.”
“Oh, Dix, huh? You must have rejected him. Be careful, Laurie. He’s never as interested in a woman as when he can’t have her.”
“Maybe he brought them to me to cheer me up.”
“I don’t doubt that. My brother is a good guy, but he needs a woman who mistreats him, and I don’t think you can be that for him. I guess that’s what happens when you bloom early and women are always throwing themselves at you—you crave what you can’t have, and what Dixxie has never had is scarcity.”
“Then I guess I was craving a hot shower and a kind word because Dix brought me a hot water bottle with a washcloth and a bouquet of lavender. Lavender makes me sneeze.”
Still, it had been awfully sweet of Dix. Downright romantic to show up in the ICU waiting room with gifts and a hot meal with a cold drink. Despite my worries over Mama’s third stroke, Dixon Caine had committed himself to pursuing me romantically.
As a teen, I would have been thrilled beyond belief, but I’m over fifty and have too many other things on my mind. Dix seems to take that as a challenge. If I’m cold to him, I don’t mean to be. Are you familiar with Spoon Theory? I simply don’t have the “spoons” to be someone else’s emotional centerpiece right now.
“Actually,” Virgil says as he pulls his cane from where it leans against his desk, “I have an appointment with a potential new resident in about five minutes, so I have to cut this short. The reason I invited you over here was to give you a full tour of this facility so that when your mom—”
“No!”
“Laurie, I’ve talked with your mom’s doctor today. I’m on the hospital staff so it’s not a violation of her privacy since I’m part of the patient advocacy team and you’ve got her health power of attorney. She’ll need help with—”
“No. I promised my mom long ago that she would never spend a single day in a nursing home, no matter what.”
He presses his lips into a straight line. “Okay. Okay, but when you’re ready—”
“I’ll never be ready. When she goes home, I’ll be there with her.” I swallow hard. “For the duration.”
“I understand.”
I know there’s more he wants to say, but thankfully, he restrains himself. He doesn’t need to explain to me that I’m not ready for this conversation.
“Well, then, I’ll walk you out, and I’ll check on you later. My meeting is in our main conference room. If you don’t want to walk back through the lobby—Mr. Beauchamp will flirt with you if he sees you—you can take the exit opposite my office door.”
Shakily, I thank him and make my way toward the back door. As I press the crash bar on the door, I’m thankful to avoid troublesome conversation with Virgil but at the same time, grateful for Virgil and everything he’s done for me in the weeks I’ve been back in my hometown.
The door opens into a narrow hall that leads to a sunny rear exit. The angle of the sunshine makes the hall unexpectedly bright and disorienting. The industrial carpet at my feet looks familiar. Why, I’m not sure. It’s god-awful ugly in the lowest bidder kind of way. Swirls of lavender, gray, and orange. I’ve not been in this corridor before, and who would have this mess in their home?
Then I remember. My vision.
Running from someone who’s trying to kill me.
You’re reading Rite of Reckoning free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2023 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.